Mexican authorities search for stolen truck with radioactive load

VERACRUZ, Mexico — A cargo truck hauling extremely dangerous radioactive material from used medical equipment was stolen from a gas station in central Mexico, and authorities sent out an alert in six central states and the capital to find it, Mexican officials said Wednesday.

The truck was carrying a metal container of cobalt-60 headed to a nuclear waste facility in the state of Mexico, said Juan Eibenschutz, director general of the National Commission of Nuclear Safety and Safeguards. Though the container is heavily sealed in lead, designed to be difficult to break and to survive accidents intact, he said it contains an amount of radioactive material that could do serious damage if opened.

Additional Photos

This image released Wednesday Dec. 4, 2013 by the National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards of Mexico’s Energy Secretary (CNSNS) shows a piece of machinery that is part of the cargo of a stolen truck hauling medical equipment with extremely dangerous radioactive material, in Tepojaco, Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City. The cargo truck was stolen from a gas station in central Mexico, and authorities have put out an alert in six central states and the capital to find it, Mexican and U.N. nuclear officials said Wednesday.

He said he didn’t know the exact weight, but that it was the largest amount stolen in recent memory, and the intensity of the material caused the alert. Local, state and federal authorities, including the military, are searching for the truck.

“This is a radioactive source that is very strong,” Eibenschutz told The Associated Press on Wednesday, adding that is can be almost immediately fatal, depending on proximity. “The intensity is very big if it is broken.”

The material was used for obsolete radiation therapy equipment that is being replaced throughout Mexico’s public health system. It was coming from the general hospital in the northern border city of Tijuana, Eibenshutz said. The thieves most likely wanted the white 2007 Volkswagen cargo vehicle with a moveable platform and crane.

Eibenschutz said there is nothing so far to indicate that the theft of the material was intentional or in any way intended for an act of terrorism.

The thieves likely didn’t know what the truck was carrying, he said, and may have discarded the metal container, which he said is about a meter square.

“If someone finds a big chunk of metal with radiation symbols all over it, they should notify us immediately and don’t open it,” Eibenschutz said.

The truck marked “Transportes Ortiz” left Tijuana on Nov. 28 and was headed to the storage facility when it stopped to rest at a gas station in Tepojaco, in Hidalgo state north of Mexico City, said driver Valentin Escamilla Ortiz.

He said told authorities he was sleeping in the truck when two men armed with a gun approached about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. They made him get out, tied his hands and feet and left him in a vacant lot nearby.

When he was able to free himself, he ran back to the gas station to get help.

Mexican customs officials are on alert, Eibenschutz said, to prevent the truck from crossing the border. He said the material could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, but could be used in a dirty bomb, a conventional explosive that disseminates radioactive material.

If the box is opened, direct exposure would result in death within a few minutes, he said.

There are an average of a half-dozen reported thefts of radioactive material in Mexico each year, Eibenschutz said, and none have proven to be intentional, meaning the thieves were not after the material. He said in all cases so far, they were after the containers or vehicles.

In a famous case in the 1970s of stolen radioactive material in Mexico, one thief died and the other was injured when they opened the container, he said. The container was junked and sold to a foundry, where it contaminated some of the steel reinforcement bar that was made there. Eibenschutz said all foundries in Mexico now have equipment to detect radioactive material.

Associated Press writer Emilio Lopez in Pachuca, Mexico, and Katherine Corcoran in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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